A recent poll showed that 58 percent of Canadians don’t care if the NHL lockout ends and any part of the 2012-13 season is played.

Although polls have never done much for me — living in a battleground state where political polls seem to sprout like so many Starbucks will do that to you, I guess — the number elicits a gasp because most of us assume that the NHL is as much a part of Canada as the maple leaf or the walleye.

If the poll of 800 people from six of Canada’s regions conducted by NRG Research Group and Peak Communications and reported by the Montreal Gazette is correct, it makes you wonder how many people in football-mad and mad-at-the-Blue-Jackets Columbus care if the NHL plays this season. It also makes you wonder again why the principals in the NHL labor talks allow this unfathomable work stoppage to go on this long.

A sizable chunk of that 58 percent in Canada probably likes hockey and follows the NHL but simply has lost patience with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, players union head Donald Fehr and the other negotiators and is fed up with their willingness to take the sport away for an extended period for their selfish gain.

The negotiators don’t own professional hockey, or at least they shouldn’t, so their act of taking it hostage for more than three months to get their way is enough to turn off a lot of people who usually spend a big chunk of their lives enjoying it and analyzing it.

Even fans of successful teams find it easy to get irritated by all of this. Should we really be grateful that the sides are finally serious about their negotiations because of a Jan. 11 deadline Bettman set? He called that the last date where the NHL could work out an abbreviated 48-game schedule, the smallest slate the commissioner said will have enough “integrity” to be worth playing.In other words, make a deal by then or lose the entire season.

But shouldn’t the deadline have been Oct. 7 — the date of the first games — and not Jan. 11? And shouldn’t the customers’ definition of a schedule’s “integrity” be more important than that of a guy who has a personal stake in the matter?

As is always the case with a work stoppage in professional sports, the people who care the most — the fans — are the ones who matter the least to those in charge. The fans’ demands are relatively simple: They want the schedule to go on as it always has, and if they’re smart, they want to see a system in place where every team regardless of market size has a reasonable chance of success.

The deal the sides are working on reportedly includes an increase in revenue sharing from $150 million to $200 million, but the NHL also wants more teams to share in the money. That means teams in large television markets that couldn’t feed at the trough before can do so now, so it’s unclear if this bigger pot will even mean much to a small-market team such as the Blue Jackets.

They aren’t the best example to use because their poor spending habits caused some of their problems; they were fifth in the NHL in payroll last season but had the worst record in the league.But the question that should intrude on every conversation about the lockout hangs in the air like a bad odor: If the NHL is willing to sacrifice three months of the season and alienate many of its fans, shouldn’t it at least get revenue sharing right so that every team has the same chance of winning as it does in the NFL?

The salary cap that both sides are haggling over has the ceiling dropping from $70 million to $60 million (owners) or $65 million (players) and a $44 million bottom, a gap that suggests that teams in nonthriving markets are going to have trouble competing without more help in revenue sharing. But in the rush to “save” what’s left of the season, that seems unlikely to happen.

Fans in Columbus, the ones who still care, would be smart to root for a good deal over the resumption of the season. A deal that gives the Blue Jackets the same chance of winning as the Rangers or the Flyers offers the only kind of “integrity” that should matter to local fans.

Cannon Fodder Podcast

Cannon Fodder is the podcast from The Dispatch sports team covering the Blue Jackets. Tune in for lively discussions about the ta and the rest of the NHL. Subscribe to the show through its RSS feed or iTunes.

Commentary from the Dispatch

Columnist Michael Arace shares his thoughts on the Blue Jackets and the NHL.